


True Stories About Imaginary Giant Robots

by HaHeePrime



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Headcrew, I Have A Vivid Imagination, M/M, Multi, Other, Real To Me, Wouldn't a Psychiatrist Love To See This!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-06 14:52:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 13,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12819915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaHeePrime/pseuds/HaHeePrime
Summary: I needed a place to record some of the wacky interactions I have had with the crew of characters who live in my head and defy my control. Some of these adventures are happy; some are sad; many are silly; all are true and complete as I recall them.One or two of 'em changed my life.Hugs to all my robot pals! Especially to you, Megs. <3





	1. Starscream: On Starscream

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I'm finally giving in to the impulse, and making a place where I can record some of the conversations I've had with the giant robots who inhabit my headspace. I'm not going to edit these much at all, or worry about grammar/style/coherence/whatever. I'm just finished with letting these things vanish into the quicksands of memory. These little one-shots aren't drabblets purely made up fun. These are things that "actually happened" in so far as things that are half-involuntarily imagined can be said to have "happened." But when you have such independent and strongwilled mechs living in your headspace, things are bound to get interesting! Occasionally, I'll include stories from Prime's POV, since I "am" him at least half the time. Hope you enjoy laughing at all the shenanigans. Just so you know, everything in here's hopelessly intermeshed with whatever I was writing at the time, so beware: out here, there be monsters. If you haven't read any of my "real" stories, you'll probably be completely at sea. But hopefully, still entertained!

 

 

**Starscream on Starscream -- But Not 'Like That!*  
**

I spend a lot of time on DeviantArt, and one time a meme went around in which people would suggest a transformer, and the recipient would tell some things about that character as they had come to know them. A good friend of mine submitted the following to me: " _Let's go with Starscream. How do you perceive him?"_

This was the somewhat unexpected response, as I just typed out everything as it transpired in real time. Looking back, I should have known that the Air Commander would no way have let me simply answer in his behalf! 

 

* * *

 

 

**Me:** " _Starscream_. Oh man..."

*pounding footfalls come crashing in*

**Ss:** "Get away from that computer, fleshling! You've done enough damage to my reputation as it is!"

**Me:** "Oh-ho-ho! The ego has landed!" *is shoved* "Hey! You can't even use a keyboard! Your fingers are too big!"

**Ss:** "Watch me. I'm not about to let you tell anyone anything about me ever again!" *steals chair, hogs keyboard* [scale? what scale? this is Transformers! We don't need no stinkin' scale!]

**Me:** "OK, what do you want me to tell them? Since, if you'll notice, your cockpit is currently typing _fgjhdfjghjfdghfdghf..."_

**Ss:** "Pit-spawned carbon-excreting Earth-germ!"

**Me:** "Ah-ah-ah!" *shakes finger* "Language!" *reclaims seat* "All right. We both know there are some pretty damning things I could tell people about you. But we're friends now, and it was too tough a fight to get here for me to toss that out lightly. So we'll agree that I will avoid any disclosures that might infringe on either yours or my own privacy. So that people won't jump to any conclusions, we'll state that neither of us has done anything we need to be ashamed of; but all the same, we wouldn't want the videos on YouTube. Some things are private. Fair enough?"

**Ss:** *snorts* "You still told them way more than you ought to have done..."

**Me:** "Really? 'Ought to have done'? Breakin' out the high-falutin' grammar now, ain't we, Mr. Science-Pants?"

**Ss:** "I. Don't. Wear. Pants."

**Me:** *doubles over laughing* [types] "Item One: Starscream does NOT wear pants."

**Ss:** *uneasy*"What... Why is that funny...?"

**Me:** *recovers breath* "OK, really, Screamer-Old Boy- oh fraggit I really try not to call you that but sometimes it just slips out..." *brief arm-pat* "Blargh. Fragging machines. Anyway... What do you want the other fleshies to know about you?"

**Ss:** *pulls up second chair. Crosses ankle over knee. Puts fingers to chin in ostentatious 'thinking' pose* "Well, they seem to know I'm the best flier in the sky..."

**Me:** *rolls eyes* Check.

**Ss:** "And they know I'm the best-looking mech ever created..."

**Me:** *snort* *headdesk* "Why do you guys even care about looks? It doesn't farm!** I think you're the only one who does, to be honest. Well, maybe Prime might disagree with you about most aesthetically-pleasing design... Oh, wait, you said 'mech,' not 'bot.' So we're not counting the femmes then. 'Cause I know he thinks Elita-" *notices glare of doom* "Shutting up about Prime now..." *shuts up. Sits very still until **Ss** unstiffens*

**Ss:** "There is one thing you can tell those arrogant flesh-sacks-"

**Me:** "Hey! You're the one 'Con who's usually not such a jerk about humanity. So hush! Be a scientist, not an aft for one minute, OK?"

**Ss:** "Fine. But you make sure to tell them that I do NOT and never will have any sort of *grimaces, as if tasting tainted energon* 'crush' on that fragging thief Prime. You got that?"

**Me:** *meekly* "Yes Starscream." *types it in*

**Ss:** *uncomfortable*"Can we be done here?"

**Me:** *soothingly* "Sure pal."

**Ss:** "You're not going to put in anything else behind my back?"

**Me:** "No, sweetie. I'll post this as-is, warts and all."

**Ss:** "I do not have any 'warts'!"

**Me:** *exasperated* "I know. You're perfection itself and someday we'll all recognize it." *changes subject* "How's Halfback?"

**Ss:** "Fine."

**Me:** "You?"

**Ss:** "Fine."

**Me:** "We good then?"

**Ss:** "Yeah, I guess."

**Me:** "All right, then." *quick hug* "Nice to see you again. It's been a while."

**Ss"** *silence. He ain't gonna say it even under torture*

**Me:** *pats his arm* "Yeah. You too. Say hi to Halfback for me. And don't be a stranger, if you want some human company once in a while. Magnus*** has grown up a lot... But you seem to have lost interest." *shrugs* "It's all good. Anyways, I'm-a send this now, and then off to write more stories. Laters, pal."

**Ss:** "Laters" [awkward pause -- he can't believe he just said that] *facepalm* *grimace* *mechly salute* *disappears*

 

* * *

 

*** "Not like that!"** The cry reverberating up and down the phone-line whenever my besties and I say something that sounds like it might be questionable/dirty. A running joke. 

**_*_ "Farm"** [verb] "to function in a logical manner" Derived from a conversation/miscommunication I had with my husband once as he was playing a Star Wars version of Age of Empires (I think)... little R2D2 units were going out, shining lights at the ground till cement circles appeared, then heading back to base. "What are they doing?" I asked. "Farming," he replied. I looked at the inexplicable circles. "How does that even farm??!"

*** Magnus**  the name of my real-life youngest son, whom Starscream used to watch avidly when he was a baby. ( **Ss** was jealous of the cuddling... I used to sometimes let him 'plug into' my head so he could feel what it was like to snuggle a small sleeping person.)


	2. Off The Chain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is another long comment I left on DeviantArt a while ago, in response to a good friend's story. When she first told me the premise, I literally wanted to hurl. (Yes, I take things waaaaay too seriously! But it's too much fun to give it up!)   
> But hey – I'm PRIME. So I fragging well took care of business in my own way. And boy, did it feel good!
> 
> As those of you who've read another of my drabbles can attest, I stayed mad. I may never be able to get along with Chromie's version of Megatron. He's like my version of him, but sideways. Or horizontal, as the case may be... (Grrr!)
> 
> For the record, her story, "Trapped," is excellent, despite the fact that I got so mad at it. Go read it. You may like it in spite of yourself. I sure do.

 

**Off The Chain, or PWNin' Face for Frenzy**

_-My Ficcy-verse-  
_ __  
***Prime gets violent***

Prime suddenly remembers all the time/dimension-hopping paraphernalia we had in TF Marvel UK-verse. He runs off to find Megs and Starscream.  
  
"Hey. I'm going to the Chromie-verse to pwn face. You guys wanna come?"  
  
Starscream: "You gonna pwn Megatron? Count me in!"  
  
Megs hesitates. It is technically still him, after all. Finally he shrugs. "...All right."

-[They step into the Thingamajigger. Flashes of light, etc.]-

Prime storms into Soundwave's quarters, grabs him by the neck, pinches just the right energon cord to nearly immobilize him. Looms(tm) right in his face. "You know, this heartless b****** act is what finally made you  _off yourself_  in my world. You might want to start remembering how to be a mech, instead of a soulless piece of slag, while you still can. Just something to think about..." He throws him down, turns his back, and stalks out of the room.

Three blows stave in the door to Megatron's quarters. The Decepticon leader is passed out on his stomach. Prime hooks fingers under the armor at the back of his neck, lifts him up roughly, and slams his face down onto his berth. Megatron comes spluttering out of recharge. He shakes his head, spitting energon and swearing.

Prime: *slam* " _That's_  for Frenzy."  
*slam!*  _"That's_  for the rest of your soldiers who don't do this themselves only because they  _don't fragging know any better,_  you sickening piece of scrap! And-"  
*slam!*  _"That's_  for me.  
You try anything like this again- EVER - and I WILL KILL YOU. That is all."

He gestures to the other two mechs. "Either of you have anything to add?"

Megs walks over to the energon-splashed berth, and looks down at Megatron. He snorts. "You know," he says, "I'm  _disappointed."_  He leans in close to the other version of himself. "I  _despise_  you," he hisses. "You are  _nothing_  to me."  
He beckons to Starscream, lifts a questioning optic ridge.

Starscream moves closer, looks down at the grovelling figure. He grimaces. "Nope." he says flatly. "Nothing to add.  _You're not worth it,"_  he sneers.

All three mechs turn their backs, and stride out of the room. Optimus flicks a few stray flecks of energon from his hands as they leave.


	3. Big Strong Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For serious, though, I love how my imagination works!

**They Look Like Big, Strong Hands, Don't They?**

[I love my imagination!]

One afternoon, I was upstairs folding laundry on my bed. Now, you have to understand, I wait till no one has any more clean clothes before I do laundry, and then I do it all in one fell swoop. So I had a huge, honkin' pile there to be dealt with. But things were goin' OK; I was chillin,' probably listenin' to NPR, and thinkin' about Giant Robots, as usual.

Well, I looked out the window, and saw to my amazement that Megatron and Starscream were strolling casually along the middle of the street outside. There was no human pandemonium yet; the cars that came along the road tended to take one look and decide to take a route in the opposite direction. So Megs and Screamer had the place to themselves, pretty much.

I was frankly astounded at how well they were getting along. But as I had lately been toiling on my story in which those two slaggers find a way (albeit posthumously) to get along, I simply took it as a sign of progress.

I hadn't seen Megatron in a couple of months, and I had missed him badly. I'd grown accustomed to his constant snark. And I missed feeling his presence at my back. I'd been focusing a lot of energy on Starscream, and though I was slowly learning to get along with the little twit (even now, I am almost unable to talk about him without using derogatory terms, may he forgive me), he weren't no Megs.

I know it seems odd to lean on Megatron. But he and I have been through a lot together. And I do. So perhaps you can understand why I dropped the shirt or whatever I was folding, and scrambled to the window.

It was open, to let in the spring breeze. It gets fragging hot up there if you leave it closed off. In real life, there are screens on our windows. But in this day-dream, we conveniently didn't have them. I shudder to think what the kids would get up to if we had second-floor windows with no screens, but that's beside the point.

I leaned my hands on the sill, and stuck my head way, way out the window. I knew the neighbors would hear me and think me insane, since I wasn't sure just how visible the big guys were being to other fleshies at the moment. But I didn't care. At the top of my lungs, I called out, "Hey Megs!" (I know he hates it when I call him that, but I just can't seem to help it. He hasn't slagged me for it – yet – because he knows that nicknames mean love.) "Megs! Scream- uh, Starscream! Hey guys! Over here! It's me!"

I never for one instant doubted that they would know who I was. I was currently writing their lives, after all, trying to make good things possible for them. Besides, they tended to hang out with me in my room and talk to me about things. Starscream would watch in fascination while I took care of my baby. And I often slept curled-up on Megatron's chest, while he recharged at night.

So I waved, and called, and after a show of rolled optics and a whispered conversation, they turned up the drive, and stopped by the window. And that's when I realized just how big they really were.

You see, my imagination tends to ignore scale. So Starscream could fit into my room if he sat cross-legged on the floor. And Megatron would only be about as tall as I was, since I was usually being Prime whenever he was around.

But there they were, in the flesh, real as real. And they were  _huge._  I was a little unsure about actually crawling out the window, so I pelted down the stairs and out into the driveway.

And I looked up. And up. I had never fully realized just how massive those guys really were. It was awesome. And terrifying. I suddenly hoped they liked me as much as I thought they did...

As I was standing there squeebling, Ol' Megsie reached down (and more down), with one of his huge black hands. All of a sudden, I realized that clambering into the hand of a 30-foot tall transformer was not going to be as simple or as easy as I'd assumed. I was going to be lifted very high up, and completely powerless to keep myself from falling.

But I did it.

The  _whoosh!_  upwards was terrifying, but exhilarating. I tried not to wriggle too much – Megs has a short temper, and I was not about to antagonize him while I was 30 feet up in the air. But it was awesome.

I'm not sure what they were planning, exactly. It seemed like another one of Megs's usual crazy G1 plots-du-jour. (But of course I would never have called it that to his face!) But they let me hang out with them while they scouted out the area.

Before I could get too dizzy with vertigo, Megatron walked back to my house (It didn't take very long) and set me down again in the driveway. I knew they had to go, but I was really going to miss their hugeness. I had to go, however, when my next door neighbor peeked her head out and stared at me looking terrified, and asked me what the heck was going on. I told the guys farewell, and not to destroy too much, and headed back inside.

I finished folding my laundry.

With a goofy smile on my face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes of course, I did steal this chapter's title from The Neverending Story. (SUCH a sad line!!!)


	4. Detente

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An entry from Prime's personal log...
> 
> It's in this "really-ish happened" story collection because, see, I've been "being" Prime for a decade now (thank you to all the friends who let me get away with this!), so sometimes things that happen to him happen to him as me. Or me as him. Make sense? All right, let's move ahead... 
> 
> Strong references here to the events of Entr'acte: Ghost Spark.

**Detente**

 

* * *

 

**Triple Encryption: Enabled**

**Personal Internal Log: OPTIMUS PRIME**

**Entry # 337485667**

* * *

I need to record an event which has changed me, and for the better. But I'm not sure I will be able to put it into adequate words. I will do my best, and hope that something useful comes from the effort. But there is no way to describe what I saw.

I suppose I should start out by admitting that I have never liked Starscream. I feel uncomfortable saying this, as it seems to me that I should have some kind of fellow-feeling for all the mechs of Cybertron, be they Autobot or Decepticon. But there was always something about Starscream that unnerved me, something I never knew how to handle.

I will never say this out loud to anyone. But I'm glad he's dead. I do not believe the Ceasefire could have held long with him online, and I hate the thought of caging him in spark-containment for eternity.

With that said, I must also record that he hates me more than he hates any other mech. And with good reason. I was given the one thing that he wanted above all else. And then he was killed to keep me alive, in order that I might keep the thing he craved.

I am speaking of Megatron's spark.

And I never really wanted that, either.

Which fact only made the whole situation that much harder on Starscream.

And so around and round it went.

I wasn't able to help Megatron, when he started having his nightmares. It was Starscream's ghost - whether real or imagined makes little difference – that was visiting him in his troubled recharge cycles. If it had been any other mech, any other memories, I could have helped him through. But in this, I could only stand by, and watch from a distance. I'm still disappointed in myself that I had to delegate that task to Elita.

When Megatron came to me, and told me that Starscream had gone for good, that he had made his peace, I was glad. I was glad for my bond-brother. But I was also selfishly relieved on my own behalf. Finally, I thought, I would be able to stop fretting about that attention-demanding Seeker.

Right...

Of course, I didn't stop fretting about him. The more I learned about the Starscream that huddled beneath the carefully-shined exterior, the worse I felt for the way I had treated him. I wanted to apologize somehow for taking the one thing he had dearly wanted. I hadn't liked him; but I hadn't wanted to hurt him. I had not wanted to drive him out of his mind.

I couldn't stop thinking about him.

I couldn't stop the regret those thoughts would bring. I felt awful for what I had done to him, no matter how honorable my intentions had been, and how successful the outcome was turning out to be.

And that is why this – event, whatever it was – means so much to me.

I may never know whether this was anything more than an unusually vivid dream. But I'll hold onto it, just the same, whether or not it was 'real.'

I had just plugged into the chargers, and was lying on my berth, powering down. Something drew my attention, and there in the doorway, I saw two mechs. I knew they were dead ; they were insubstantial, somehow. Ethereal. They looked the same as they had in life, but I think that my hand might have passed right through them if I had tried to touch their armor. One of the mechs was Starscream.

His friend, the other mech who had come with him, stood behind him in the doorway, and motioned him gently to move forward into the room. Starscream frowned, but in he came.

He stood before me, looking defiant, but not speaking. I sat up, and faced him. I glanced over quickly at the other mech, and he nodded gravely to me. I scanned his image, and searched the archives until I found his ident-records. I now know a little better who Halfback was. But I understood him better in that one shared glance than I would have if I had spent a vorn researching him. He had brought Starscream here to make peace with me; and that spoke volumes.

I needed to make my peace with him as well, to let go of all the stored resentment I felt, all the piled-up guilt and shame. And I knew that I would be given no other chance.

So I stood.

I wanted to reach out to him. But I held back. This was Starscream, and I still carried a lingering unease around him, a reluctance to get too close to him for fear of being contaminated by his unquantifiable wrongness.

Besides, I told myself, he was a ghost.

But my spark ached for him.

He seemed to want to say something. Or possibly he was trying  _not_  to say something. If I were him, I'd have been shouting words that would make even Megatron blush. I could see that he still hated me.

Well, perhaps not hated. He had come to me to make peace, after all.

But still he spoke no word.

And suddenly I wanted desperately to let him know how sorry I was for my part in all this. I couldn't go back; there was nothing I could – or even would – change. But I was sorry. He was a child of Primus same as I was, and deserved more of my respect than I had shown him.

So I held out my hand. Not to touch him; that was impossible both because of the differences in our dimension, and because I think it would have been torture to him to have me touch him. No, I held out my closed fist. Then I opened up the empty hand palm-upwards in the old, wordless expression of true sorrow and regret. I had nothing worthwhile I could give him. But I could give him forgiveness, and acknowledge I had failed him.

His response wasn't much. But he nodded. And he held out his own hand in the traditional response: a quick, half-formed mirror of my own gesture, opening his hand palm-downward to emphasize he was letting go. I felt my shoulders slump as tension left me. For I understood what he meant: he had come here to finally and completely relinquish the claim which he had held on Megatron for so many years. He was giving the mech he had pursued for so long over into my care. And that must have been one of the hardest things he has ever done, especially voluntarily.

I felt my responsibility for Megatron double. From now on, I will care for him not only as his bond-brother, but on behalf of Starscream as well. I will do that for him. I promised him that night that I would not let him down. I promised him that I would take care of ol' Megs... well, not the way he would have, if he'd been allowed to. But to the best of my ability. It's all any of us can do...

His coming to me at all had been a gift – I'm sure if was dreadfully hard for him to offer such forgiveness, to accept, to let go of something he had craved so desperately for so long. I wish I could have done more for him.

But as I reached out to him again and tried to speak, he turned on his heel and strode out of the door without a backward glance. The other mech nodded again – that same deep, knowing expression on his face - and followed him.

Starscream was gone.

Gone from my life now, as he had finally gone from Megatron's, leaving us free. He had given to me his claim on Megatron. And I was not such a fool as to undervalue that gift.

I will forever be grateful to that unknown mech, for bringing Starscream back, and helping us both to let go of the heavy burdens we had carried.

It feels good, to have seen that side of Starscream. It is a relief, to have been given that instant to express to him my regret. We will still never be close friends. But I no longer fear him, as I once did.

I will try always to remember this night, and the things I saw.

I must never allow myself to act so selfishly again. For I do not believe that we are often given a second chance like this to make amends.

Thank you, Halfback, whoever you were.

And thank you, Starscream. I will not fail your trust.

This I swear.

Prime Out.

* * *

Top Secret Data Entry

Save / Delete -?-


	5. Whom Primus Sent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N: OK. This isn't going to make sense to very many people. But I rediscovered it in my emails one night, and realized that I REALLY didn't want it to get lost in the aether. So here you go. Basic run-down – I'd been reading (and getting emotionally embroiled in) my good-best-pal's story Trapped, and had just read the chapter we lovingly referred to as "Pwned Into A Tree." And the following happened. I decided to just paste in the whole text of the email I sent her, including the intro, outro, and complete disregard for the rules of grammar and punctuation; because it fleshes things out a bit more.
> 
> I will defend Gentle!Megs with my dying breath. He has it in him, if the right triggers are pulled.
> 
> References here to Chapter 2 of this work, "Off the Chain."

**Whom Primus Sent**

 

YOU WANNA HEAR SOMETHING COOL?  
This is why I LOVE having my Imaginary World.  
BEHOLD:

So. Last night. To my total surprise.

I-Prime read the story, and ground my teeth over it. Because the time I went over there and lost my temper, it helped no one; not even me, because I feel really bad about losing it like that. I looked over at Megatron, and he had SeriousFace on, because he'd also read the story. He looked at me, stood... And shimmered over into Your Universe.

I had completely not expected that. But I watched. And I loved him for it!

* * *

He walked over to the tree where Frenzy was passed out and alone.

His mouth was a tight line as he looked down at the little crumpled body. He crouched down, and checked the monitors. When he knew that Frenzy would not waken, he lifted him ever-so-gently into his arms, and cradled him to his chest. He loosed a line from his wrist, and sent a tiny stream of his own energon into Frenzy's body; just enough to keep him online. He hoped his energy signature wouldn't be detected by the medics, but hey, if it was, maybe they would explain it according to what they knew of  _this_  universe's Megatron. Fragging aft. He turned his face to Frenzy's unhearing audial resting on his shoulder, and whispered to him all the things that that other Megatron never could and never would say.

"I'm proud of you," he said. "Right now, in this moment, I am proud of you. And I'm sure I will be in the future as well. You're going to be all right. You're  _both_  going to be all right."

And he claimed the sparkling; not as a possession, but acknowledging it as an extension of his essence. "I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that you're the first mech I would have chosen to carry my sparkling," he said. "But you'll do OK. You're going to be a much better father than you realize. And you're going to have a whole pack of ridiculous, goodhearted mechs tripping over themselves to help you." He hugged him tighter, for just a second, optics darkening at the thought of what almost had been. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for  _protecting_  her through all of this, as well as you were able."

"Oh yes," he whispered, " _It's going to be a girl_." He hugged Frenzy. "Don't worry about her being a 'sawed-off little shrimp.' She'll have a combination of your  _charming_  personality, and my mighty ego." He laughed quietly to himself. "You slaggers aren't going to know what hit you!" Then he smiled, but it was a sad, regretful smile because he wouldn't be in this universe to watch her grow up and play with her and be her dad. ('Cause Megatron yuvs girls.) "Love her for  _me_ , too, all right?" he whispered. "Give her the love that  _I_ , not that other waste of slag, would have given her. When she conquers the universe, tell her you're proud, and tell her from me, too!"

Megatron waited and watched, and sent all the strength he could into Frenzy, willing him to hold on. He cradled him, and rocked him, and whispered encouragement. He waited for Ironhide. When the old red mech crested a nearby rise, Megatron gently laid Frenzy's body back on the ground, making him as comfortable as he was able. He was fairly sure he was invisible to others on this plane, but he nodded solemnly to the Autobot. "Take care of him, you hear me?" he commanded. Then he shimmered out of that world, back into his own.

* * *

And all I-Prime could do was hug and hug and hug him, saying "Thank you!" over and over again. It healed my owie-heart a lot. Go Megs. The spark-bond may have kept him sane, but taking responsibility for Starscream is what taught him how to take care of people. How to be a dad.


	6. Megs & Me

**Yes, That _Is_  an Imaginary Giant Robot Glowering Down At You From Behind Me**

The only annoying thing about being friends with Megs is that he's in such complete denial about it. I mean, he's always razzing Prime for having a "Squishy Friend" in Corax [a real-life best-pal who's loved Prime with a pure and fervent love since '84]. (Prime just kind of shakes his head and ignores him.) It would be nice, just once even, to have an actual conversation with the Big Bad Dude. But so far, our only communication takes place in the form of terse snarking at each other. I tease him about being 'pretty'; he describes me as a repulsive organic thing, and we both pretend not to care about each other as much as we do. We're both a bit embarrassed by the degree of our closeness. If it's hard to explain to your friends why you love a giant evil robot (but not like that), then imagine how hard it is for Megatron to explain to his troops not only his tolerance, but his actual affection for one of the 'disgusting Earth-germs.'

But on the other hand, if he was more open about his feelings (in the recommended manner of human analysts everywhere), it would be far less meaningful when he, on those very rare occasions, actually sidles up behind me and puts a silent, approving hand on my shoulder. He never  _says_  anything. But he lets me know he's impressed. And when you impress Megatron, even if it's just by keeping going when the going is tough and you only want to sit down and cry, it is almost impossible not to feel pretty darn spiff about yourself. Encouragement from Megatron means a  _heck_  of a lot more than, say, encouragement from Bumblebee. (This is not to say that I dislike the yellow guy's constant cheerfulness. It's a grossly underrated gift! And besides, he doesn't live in my headspace, so...)

I may never hear from Megatron exactly what it means to him to have my love and friendship. But I do know that he cares. I often feel like the taker in the partnership – after all, it's not as if Megatron's reaching out to me for comfort on a daily basis. It's not in his nature to admit to need or weakness. But I was there for him, wholeheartedly and with complete acceptance of everything both laudable and shameful in him, when his world first collapsed and he was left alone and terrified in a world he wasn't equipped to navigate. I loved him first, when he thought himself unlovable. And that counts for a lot, in his mind. Besides, he gets to feel all superior this way, to think that I'm the needy one and he's 'past all that now.'

Actually, in a way he is. And I kind of miss his old vulnerable self. I mean, I'm happy for him – he's adjusting remarkably well, settling into his new leadership role, finding his own course without having to depend on Prime to steady him. But I gotta be honest: when the love of a little human is enough to buoy up the Commander of the Decepticons, it is very stoking to the ego of that human!

I couldn't get away with this if I were male. Megatron is still a bit grossed-out by humanity in general, and would freak out in about ten seconds if a bunch of them started clambering around on him. But I'm a girl. And Megatron responds to girls in a completely different way than he does to guys. Males are competition. Girls are... Well, I'm not sure if he's ever thought it through, but all I know is, if you put a fembot in his presence, and he goes all woobly. If they manage to get under his shell, if they give him the tiniest bit of bot-to-bot compassion, he will love them with his whole soul. He'll even extend it to a human female, if he can sense that respectful reciprocation. He just needs someone to make the first offering of the heart, in order to be able to return the gift.

We have a lot of fun together. I'm quite frank about loving the stuffin' outta him. But I give just as much as I get in the teasing department. I call him Megs, even though I know he hates it, because I can't seem to be able to call him anything else. And at this point, he's pretty much accepted it. He makes the obligatory grimace, the expected complaint. But he knows it means love. And he pretends to be grossed-out by any and all fleshies and their disgusting rituals. But he seems willing enough to let me snuggle up to him whenever I need it. In fact, throughout the day, whenever things get tough, I can stop, take one step back, and he will be there, a silent, unseen, sturdy presence at my back, always there to support me.

That's the thing I love him most for: all the stuff he'd rather die than let anyone see. I love him for his hitherto-unplumbed decency, his secret woobliness. I love him for being such a rock. I feel like it's so unfair: I was there for him for a month or two; I helped him through that one rough patch. But he's been there for me on an almost daily basis, and helped me through several times of genuine real-life crisis. I've come to expect that he'll always be there, one single step behind me, watching in quiet amusement. When he leaves, I mourn. So far, thankfully, he's always come back.

I know that this is nerdy, but I hope he never, never leaves. I'd be ok with being a 90-year-old cat-lady, still talking in my head to an invisible bad-tempered robot.


	7. There's No Such Thing As Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is something that wrote itself about Prime and the human femme he calls his "shoulder angel." My good friend Corax has loved Prime from the beginning. She's always there for him. And he loves her forever. This wasn't written as something I would post; it came through me as a gift to her, with all Prime's sincere over-much-ness piled on. But I don't want it to disappear. And she doesn't either. So you get to read it too. 
> 
> Much love, my small human pal. Forever.

 

**All The Time in the World**

_Time is a strange thing_ , thought the Autobot Commander. He was sitting in a clearing on a tree-covered hillside upon the planet Earth, and basking in the gentle warmth of its late-afternoon sun.  _There is an unreality about it – now, at any rate._ He listened in a thoughtful silence as birds sang and bickered overhead; insects bustled in the underbrush; and on his shoulder, a small human female sighed in deep contentment.

Prime shared the sentiment. This was a good day – a day he had set apart from all the rigors of his duties; a day on which he'd even shut down his chronometer. Now he sat on a hillside with his best human friend on his shoulder; and now was good.  _But what is 'now'?_ he wondered idly.

Time passed over them like the gentle breeze that carried with it far-off sounds of the life going on below them. Dogs barked, car engines revved and slowed, and children squealed with laughter. The air was heavy with the scents of sun-warmed earth and late-summer grasses. The ground was soft, hummocked with tufts of undergrowth and gopher-holes, and blanketed here and there with fallen leaves or brown pine-needles. And time flowed softly, too. It glided between them without haste, allowing them to savor its sweet sadness.

_I'm not sure I believe in time._  Prime's thoughts rolled languorously, like the low green hills and valleys around them.  _At least,_ he added to himself,  _not as we think we know it._ Abstractedly, he raised a hand and slowly stroked his little friend with one delicate finger. She put her arms around his hand, and held it to her cheek; then let it go. And he could hear her smile.

"I don't believe in time," he said out loud. His voice by rights should have been startling in the otherwise quiescent woods. But somehow, now, it seemed all of a piece with the rest of the quiet afternoon. The birds, the bugs, the muffled sussurus of life and traffic down below – and Optimus Prime's rumbling baritone. It all fit in, somehow.

"Why not?" inquired his friend in some amusement. Her voice was low and easy, comfortable and kind. She spoke to him without pretense, without self-consciousness or pride. "You've been through quite a lot of it, I'd thought."

Prime laughed, and butted his head against her. "So they tell me. But little one," – another laugh rose up amid his words like marshmallow-scented smoke from a campfire – "If time runs forward all the same for every living creature, how is it that I feel I've known you from the moment I was forged?"

A blush crept up over the human's soft, pink cheeks. "Oh, Boss!" she said, not knowing how she should respond. "You're such a tease!"

"Sometimes," he agreed equably. "But not today. Not right this minute, anyway," he added with a wink. "I mean it, little one. You've worked your way into the deepest levels of my memories. When I remember my first posting, it's as if you're right there with me, telling me to make the most of what I couldn't know back then was such an easy life." He cupped her small frame in his hand. "And when I recall my darkest hours, once again you're there to comfort me. In triumph and in pain, it feels as though you're always there beside me, loving me, encouraging me, giving me a share of your strength." He turned to face her, nose-to-nose (she laid a delicate hand against his faceplate). "And yet your kind can only live for a small fraction of our lifespan. So how is it that time can have any bearing on our friendship?"

Her eyes widened. He felt the hiccup in her breath, and watched her, smiling, as she tried to format a reply.

"That is the nicest- But-" She looked into his somber face. "You don't really mean-?"

"I do." He put his finger to her lips. "So let's not spoil it with too much logic, all right?" His optics twinkled as he nuzzled his faceplate against her cheek. But then a chill of sorrow dimmed their clear blue light. "Besides," he murmured, "I want to believe I'll always have you with me. Not just until you... return into the Earth."

The only answer she could give him was to snuggle closer in against him. "I'm with you now," she reminded him.

"And I'm grateful, little one. More, perhaps, than you can ever know."

He winked at her, to reassure her that despite the momentary lapse into a melancholy vein, there was no cause to wallow in it. With the easy familiarity of long companionship, he drew her down and cupped her close against his chest. "Hold tight," he warned.

Optimus Prime fell back against the hillside with a hiss of cydraulics. The warm autumnal sun felt pleasant on his metal skin; and the soft earth at his back was more forgiving than the metal berths at home. He'd have a bit of trouble getting all the leaves and twigs out of his armor, but right now he didn't care.

"Listen," he murmured. "Today, time does not touch us.  _Listen_ ," he repeated. "Maybe you'll feel it too."

Corax knew that Optimus had probably meant for her to listen to the sounds fluttering up from the world around them. But instead she lay with her cheek pressed against his flat chestplate. Now he was still, quiescent. But the pulmonary ebb and flow of Cybertronic life – the soft, vibrating hum of idling servos, the swishing circulation of fuel and oil, the electric crackle of alertness in him – meant that even in such stillness, Optimus was never really silent.

But now the sounds of Earth – so often heard that they were usually filtered out of her conscious awareness – began to mingle with the stranger sounds of her robotic friend. The rapid flutter of a bird's wings overhead played counterpoint to a series of clicks from somewhere around Prime's left shoulder. The wind's rustle between a maple's golden leaves was underscored by the deep thrumming of the Autobot Commander's spark. And in among them, Corax felt the rise and fall of her own breath, the quiet, steadfast throbbing of her heart.

_I think I understand it now,_  she thought.  _It's true. There's no such thing as time._

"I love you, Optimus Prime," she whispered. "I always have."

"And I you, little one," he said. "Always."


	8. Starscream Again: The Chamois of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N: People who know me in real life have heard me talk about a lot of this stuff. But I wanted to record it all, because the things I worked through with Starscream were important in my growth as a person. So, here you go.

**Filling in the Holes: The Chamois of Love**

All right. All  _right!_  I'll tell you about the time I licked Starscream's eyebrow. But you'll have to let me start at the beginning...

First off, you need to understand that, like Megatron, I hate Starscream irrationally because he is all of the things about myself that seem to make me weaker. And yes, I  _do_  have a problem with him being 'gay,' – as much as such a thing is possible among robots who don't "work that way." It seems too easy, like falling into a stereotype. But, like all my head crew, he refuses my control. I cannot make him into anything but what he insists he is.

The other thing that you should know about me is that I  _haaaate_  "being just like everyone else." So I did  _not_ want to write gay-Starscream-with-a-crush-on-Megatron. It's already been done ad nauseum in fanfiction. But slaggitall, he wouldn't let me write him any other way.

So I hated him. I hated him because the more I got to know him the more twisted he became. I hated him with stomach-clenching  _guilt._

In some sense, I have to  _become_  characters before I can write them. I have to get inside their heads and understand them, so that I'll know what they'll do. Thus, I tend not to plot as much (or as well) as many other authors. I have an idea of where the story's going, but in the end I simply turn the computer keyboard over to the robots in my head. Grapple [the nickname of an Art-Night friend] laughs at me, because I'll say things like, "Oh, dialog is easy – I just put these guys in a room and let 'em at it." But it's true. Once I know a character, they write themselves – often to my complete surprise. There have been many instances where someone will say or do something that causes me to exclaim aloud, laugh, marvel at their wisdom, or just sob.

Usually I love getting inside characters' heads. It's awesome to really get to know them. And I love finding out things about them that I previously hadn't suspected. But I  _hated_  going into Starscream's head. Megatron, back in the bad old days, was evil and cruel and manipulative. But he was my imaginary best pal, and I knew what he'd become. So although I did not like what he was doing – not at  _all_  – I did not truly hate him for it. It was uncomfortable, but wickedly exhilarating, too, sometimes. Starscream did not offer the same kind of sick reward for swimming in his filth. I just felt filthy.

I hated to write him. I hated to deal with him at all. So I avoided him. I even went so far as to have Megatron kill him off early in my story arc. I could not see any possible way for him to be anything but a liability to my Happy Little World, and I did NOT want anything to jeopardize the fragile, wonderful thing that I was building. It was one of the few times I pushed the plot.

And then Madeleine L'Engle showed up to chastise me.

I was re-reading  _A Swiftly Tilting Planet_ , but this time from the perspective of warring robot armies. (There are few things in the real world that cannot be related to my Imaginary one.) Well, that story was a real slap in the face for me, because I saw that Madeleine, one of my childhood heroes, wrote even the most unlikable of her characters out of a deep well of love and forgiveness for their failures. She understood them, and she loved them, without trying to gloss over the bad things they'd done. She wrote no one out of hatred. And that made her story much, much better.

I had been writing Starscream out of hatred. And it was ruining my story. Under Madeliene's stern rebuke, I realized that killing him off to suit myself was a far more surefire way to undermine my happy world than letting him wander around loose in it ever would have been.

So I invited him into my room (where the head-crew usually resides), and told him I was sorry for writing him in hatred. I looked – really looked – at him for the first time. And I let myself love him, even as he was. I let myself see past my personal dislikes, and love the mech he really was, not the construct I had built to keep him at a distance. I stopped being afraid to accept him.

And...

There's no way I can write this so that you'll know how significant it was. After all, it was all in my head. But as Dumbledore says (bless him!) "Of course this is all happening inside your head! But that doesn't mean it isn't real!" Perhaps you'll understand a little how profound it was if I tell you that I actually emailed my family about it, even though they'd be confused as heck. It was important to me.

What happened was that after I out-loud told him I was sorry, I reached out my hands, and took Starscream's spark into my own small human chest. I took him into myself, claimed him, 'named him me,' as Madeleine would have said. I let myself love him with my whole heart.

After that, things changed a great deal.

I was deeply-enmeshed in writing  _Entr'acte,_  the story about Megatron and Starscream. It was my offering of penance, my effort to make some small recompense for thrusting him aside. It was me facing all the horf that was in Starscream and Megatron's sick games they played around each other. It was me dealing with all the grunge that had built up along the bottom of Decepticon-dom. It was me facing all the gunk that had to be cleaned up before a 'Happy Little World' was even possible. And the whole time I was writing it, Imaginary Starscream sat at my elbow.

It wasn't all pleasant. The first thing that happened was that Imaginary Megatron up and left. It wasn't malicious. It's just that he and Starscream really are incapable of occupying the same space for very long without contention. But I missed him badly. He's in many ways the rock on which I lean.

But in some ways even worse still, I somehow got booted out of living in Prime's head. That was harsh. I  _love_  being Prime! It's... It's  _who I am!_  But I could not be Prime around Starscream. To this day, he and Prime keep out of each other's space. There is a kind of terminal awkwardness between them.

So for many months, it was just little human me, and Starscream.

So we talked. What else was there to do?

I never slept on his chest, the way I do with Megatron. For one thing, Megs's chest is flat, whereas Starscream has absolutely no comfortable sleeping area. But mostly, Starscream was always just  _smaller_  in my head than Megatron is. He could sit cross-legged in my bedroom, and fit fairly comfortably in the corner. He had certain places where he'd simply sit and watch what I was doing.

I'd just had my youngest son Magnus then, and Starscream was fascinated by the tiny human baby. But more than that, he was envious of the parent-child bond he watched in action. He would have done anything (and tried) to have somebody hold and love him, the way I held and wibbled over Magnus every day. I understood that longing, being a hug addict myself. So I'd actually let him plug into my head when I was snuggling Magnus, just to let him have a vicarious taste. It wasn't much, but it was something. And Starscream's catch-phrase in my world seems to be "I'll take what I can get." I've never let Megatron plug in like that, not let him feel what I was feeling. He wasn't really interested (and he seems to be able to read my mind in any case). But I gave Starscream full access. And it actually was really nice. Who knew?

I enjoyed having Starscream as a friend and companion. He made me look at humanity in new ways. He helped me to appreciate things I'd never even thought about before. Like skin. Starscream would have  _killed_  for skin, and an organic's flexibility. His sensors are more finely-tuned than other mechs'. But he's still a giant robot made of metal, and thus unable to wrap around another being the way we are. Too clunky. Yes, even Starscream is too clunky for some things, and they happen to be the things he'd love most to be able to do.

I've always been jealous of the spark-bond. But Starscream made me appreciate human bonding much more fully than I ever had. (And I'm not just talking about sex. That's only one small part of it.)

I did kind of have to kick him out during those "marital moments," though. He just got a little creepy with his avid watching. Megatron, when he was there, would kind of roll his eyes and leave – he simply didn't care about this strange human ritual. But Starscream was _hungry_ , and he'd watch with a clinical intensity that creeped me out. So he got booted from the room.

There was a time during all this that I realized that of all the mechs of Cybertron, Starscream would be the one best able to invent a machine that could facilitate a human-to-human spark-bond. He even indicated his willingness to try, in return for all the access I had given him, all those times I'd let him plug into my head and fill his empty bucket with vicarious snuggling. But also around that time, Ironhide [my husband's TF nickname] said something that surprised me, and I realized that I needed to appreciate the process of communication, all the struggle and misunderstanding, because it allowed for those kinds of surprises. I realized I liked the fact that there were still things about Ironhide left for me to find out. So I thankfully rescinded my request, and we canceled the imaginary project. (Which was a good thing, since it was, you know,  _imaginary,_  and could never have worked in the real world in the first place!)

I still wanted to do something for Starscream, though. I knew that I was coming to the end of his story; and that at its ending, he would go. And by this time I was really close to him – in some ways closer than Megs and I had ever been. We'd just spent so much time talking about ourselves and how we felt about various things, comparing notes as equals. Working out our issues together had really made us close. I did not want to send him out into the next dimension with his love-bucket still empty. I mean, I knew that Megtron would have learned a little bit how to take care of his Second, but  _I_ still wanted to do something.

So while Starscream sat beside my bed in the mutable space of imagination, with his head going clear up through the disappearing ceiling because he was finally almost at full size, I got out the semi-official Chamois of Love from the TF: Armada series. (Don't ask. Hey, at least they tried.) And then I clambered up his drawn-up legs, barefooted so that I could feel where I was climbing (and so that there would be no separation between us), and went to work with that big checkered rag.

Because giant robots are tricky to clamber around on – even the imaginary ones – I mostly stayed on his shoulder once I got there, and focused on his face. It just seemed right.

I wanted to try everything, anything that might in some way "work." I just wanted him to feel the kind of love we humans are lucky enough to feel every day if we are blessed with family and friends who give us hugs. So I tried dry. I tried wet. I even got out Ironhide's and my special massage oil. This wasn't a car wash. This was snuggles. So yes, I kissed his face the way I kiss my babies' faces. And I even ran my tongue along his eyebrow and along his cheekplate-edge. I honestly did not mean anything sexual about it. But I did pull out all the stops in the  _sensuality_  department. I just wanted him to feel  _good,_  dang it!

Starscream just sat there, sucking it all in like an empty vacuum. He was holding himself together tightly, trying not to lose it. He was keeping himself separate from me. But every so often, a little tremor would go shivering down his frame. And if giant robots could cry, he might have. I know I was. Because dang it all, I love Starscream.

I still pretend not to love him – and feel like a traitor to my friend each time I do – but now that he's gone, I miss him mightily. It's awkward. On the one hand, we were really tight there, those few months. But on the other, he does still squick me out a little. I mean, I understand him a lot better. But he's not  _right_  – even he'll freely admit it once he trusts you (which is rare). He thinks Primus fragged up when he made him, and resents the brokenness of his programming -- the way he gloms so unhealthily onto other mechs even if they hurt him. I think, however, that it was circumstances that fragged up, not Primus. If Starscream could have found a companion to love him the way he needed; if there hadn't been a huge big slagging war; if Megatron had not been such a complete, total &^%$# … Maybe Starscream could have been quite happy and content.

But that's not what happened.

So I wrote  _Entr'acte_  for them; and at least they understand each other now.

And I climbed up and licked Starscream's eyebrow. I didn't even think to be ashamed about it till I thought about the next day. After all, didn't it make me just another silly Starscream fangirl, out to invent carnal escapades? But although I was intensely embarrassed for a long time, I still don't think I did anything I ought to feel badly about. There was a hole in his heart. And I was there with a chamois. We each do what we can to stitch up all the holes left in the turning world.


	9. Humanity: It Happens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when two mechs I love turn human for a day... (Not what you might expect!)

**Humanity: It Happens**

The following is a completely true story. Or, true inasmuch as anything half-imagined can be.

I woke up from a nap, looked blearily across the room, gasped, and lurched down the stairs. "Help!" I said, grabbing [my husband] Ironhide by the shoulders. "Megatron's turned human and I can't vouch for my behavior!"

He looked up from the World of Warcraft with the expression of a longsuffering husband who finds his wife's insanity mildly amusing, yet interminably persistent.

I then proceeded to relate to him the following events as they transpired. He listened, and interjected his own comments and observations. I love Ironhide forever.

* * *

I'd woken up to see that both Megatron and Starscream had inexplicably assumed human shape, and both were sort of staring at me. Megatron was absolutely disgusted. He stood in awkward stiffness, arms and legs held apart, as if he could not bear to let any part touch any other part, because he'd have to  _feel_  it. Starscream, on the other hand...

Just after I'd tumbled down the stairs, Starscream pelted headlong after me. He was throwing his clothes off as he went, and yipping a wordless, joyful cry of freedom. He flung open the door, tore out onto the front lawn, and proceeded to roll naked in the freshly-mown grass.

Yeah... I shut the door and pretended not to know him. Last I heard, he was squeebling something about how he'd _"Never felt so **aliiive**...!"_

(You might think that I found this somewhat shocking. But I live in a house full of naked men. Or man-singular and boys-plural, anyway. I have become immune to male anatomy.)

While all of this was going on, Megatron came gingerly down, still trying not to let any part of his body touch any other part. I turned to see him standing just behind me (as is his wont). He was GLOWERING.

"Why did you imagine me so  _ **short**?"_  he demanded.

I burst out laughing. Of course he was, as always,  _exactly_  as tall as I am. (This is an important point of honor between Me-Prime and Megs.) 'Exactly as tall as I am' equals an extremely paltry 5'2". Or 5-foot-one-and-three-quarters, if I'm being totally honest. And there was Megatron, extremely honest in his height (or lack thereof), looking extremely pained by this whole escapade.

I'm not that good at visual imagining. But I seem to recall salt-and-pepper hair, longish and curly, but not hanging to the shoulders. A severe dark gray sportcoat (off the rack, not tailored to him; so it hung a little long and loose). Dark blue jeans. (He  _hated_  the way the stiff denim felt against his legs, which is why I know there were jeans.) In build, he was thickish, tough but soft at the edges, with just a hint of pudge around the middle. He is, in human years after all, in his late-50's. He could have pushed a truck a half a mile by himself, but he would not have impressed the guys at the local gym. Not those who didn't know what they were looking at, at any rate.

I would have laughed and hugged him, but that would have squicked him irredeemably.

So yeah – despite my first "Uh-oh!" response, there was never any real danger of imagined marital infidelity. We are, irreconcilably, two different species. VERY different species. Megatron quickly got bored watching me and Ironhide talk about World of Warcraft, and faded in a huff (but with immense relief!), back to his usual robotic dimension.

Starscream, on the other hand...  
Oh, Starscream!

* * *

He was picked up by an ambulance, after neighbors called the cops about the crazy naked man in the front yard. There, I imagine, he found a cute EMT or other passing female, and proceeded to make much hay while the sun shone. I don't believe it even took too much persuading. See, Starscream has the "Baby Bird Syndrome" in SPADES. (This is the condition where the male has some pitiful backstory or hidden emotional pain, which elicits an instinctual desire on the part of the female to take him home and make him better [and hug him and love him and name him George]. It is nearly impossible to resist. Trust me on this. *facepalm*)

I had (for months) some guilt about releasing this sex machine out into Mormondom. After all, we're not supposed to frolic around with everyone we meet. But I reminded myself that they all made their own decisions; and it was out of my hands in any case, since I had no idea where he was. I suppose I should have seen it coming, and hauled him back inside by the scruff of his scrawny neck. But I'd hate to deny him his one day of freelove.

When he finally did return, it was in someone else's scrubs, with a ridiculous, irrepressible grin on his face. I'm not sure where he found them all, but he seemed to have found plenty of willing and able partners.

("But I thought you said he was gay?" I hear you asking. Yes, as a transformer, he's after a mech bondmate. But humans work differently. And all he knows of frolicking is what he's gleaned from Ironhide and me when I was too slow kicking him out of the bedroom. He'd probably take anyone who came along, regardless of their gender; but he's more of a draw to girls. They would positively swarm him. I mean, they do already. Look at fanfiction.)

I just hope he didn't break too many hearts. Or, Primus forfend, father any children. Can you imagine? A kid with that heritage would make [my middle son] Seth look positively TAME! (Although I could see the mother having secret glee as she watched her progeny tear through the world.) I still wonder what happened during all those hours he was gone. He was out 'Baby-Birding' until late that night.

In case anyone is interested, Human!Starscream has black curly hair about an inch or two long, a long lean body with a runner's musculature, and wide mouth with a wicked grin. His features are sharp, his nose is longish, and it's hard to tell his age – he acts 18, but his wind-burned skin suggests he's probably as much as 20 years older than that. I do not know – I did not have much conversation with the silly man-boy other than to ask him sternly, hands-on-hips, "I take it you had  _fun?"_

He only grinned, and faded sighing into utterly sated dissolution.

Silly, silly,  _silly robots!_

How I love them!


	10. Taking the Headcrew on a Fieldtrip

**Out of the Box (Out of my Head): Taking the Headcrew on a Field Trip**

**Part 1: Celestial Soup**

So, I went to visit two of my best pals: Chromia and Hound, who live several states over. It was the first time I'd flown in over a decade. (This will be important later, but not now.) As part of the festivities, we went to an old restaurant in the middle of nowhere: a place full of what people like to call "atmosphere," owned by one family for ages, serving amazing food in tin cups on thick timber tables. We were all giddy just from being in the same town together; but this was the fourth or fifth day, so we'd gotten past frantic activity, and on to a steadier joy. So when the soup came, we were all willing to take the time to savor it.

You know how sometimes food tastes so good that you have to fall back in your seat and exhale in almost criminal fulfilment? Yeah. It was delicious. There we all were, in this grand old place, eating delicious food - a sensory valhalla - and I realized that the best person to fully appreciate all this was... Humanized Starscream.

The best thing about having friends who are in the same fandom (and who know you really, really well) is that you can invite your own imaginary friends to dine with them. And they'll half-see them along with you. So I made the suggestion, they agreed, and he pulled up a chair at the end of our small table. I told him he had to taste some of these things, and we all watched him roll his eyes in ecstasy and chew.

We spent the rest of that exquisite meal with an extra guest. He was so real that he participated in the conversation (It's his fault that "soup" is now a euphemism). He traded barbs with everyone, making clever remarks I hate myself for no longer remembering. I found myself gesturing to (and laughing with) an invisible person. And the best part was that the other girls were right there with me in the game: real and imaginary friends in a glorious free-for-all around the table.

The girls don't know this, but he didn't leave when we loaded up in the car and headed off to somewhere else. He actually curled up in the back seat beside me, and put his head in my lap so I could ruffle his hair like the cat he is. And that was nice. It was a kind of crazy time, and Starscream anchored me. I find it very satisfying to give the guy just a little love. He soaks in it so that you know that what you've done for him makes a real difference. It's empowering to be able to make someone's month just by ruffling their hair.

o0o0o

**Part 2: The Flight Home**

As anyone who's flown over the US knows, a huge part in the middle is just like a never-ending patchwork quilt: grids of square and circular fields of brown and green in all their variations. It's cool for a little while. But then you get incredibly bored with it. At least, I do. I was mountain born and raised: a Colorado girl until the day I die.

Well, my plane home flew over the endless quilt 30,000 feet below us. At that distance, you cannot even see freeways. Whole cities are nothing more than a sprinkling of dirty confetti. And it's flat, flat, flat, flat,  _flat._

I don't do well with flat.

But my plane stopped in Denver, and I switched to a smaller craft. On the way over, there had been thick cloud cover, so while I had reveled in the whipped-cream textures of the clouds below the wings, I had not seen what was beneath them. So when we took off and headed up over the gosh-darn-slagging Continental Divide, I pressed my nose against the window and gaped.

The plane angled its climb right up along the slope of the mountain range. I'd had no idea it would be like that. I mean, I know that those mountains are 10-20 thousand feet high. But I'd forgotten what that means in terms of flying over them. It means that you worry the plane won't get altitude fast enough. It means that what was waaaaay down there at 30,000 feet is right beneath the wings now by comparison. I could see everything: individual houses, even. Not to mention tiny ice-cold sky-lakes in between the peaks, as well as the shapes of the mountains, the scope of them, the spread. And don't forget, these were **my** mountains. These were my **home**. So I was on the lookout for places I _recognized_. About that time, I started whispering to Megatron. In fact, I blinking grabbed him by the back of the neck and smashed his face up against the plexiglass.

"Look at this!" I whispered. Out loud. After all, it was a plane; no one was going to hear me whispering. "Look at it, Megs! You cannot tell me that this planet is not beautiful. You can't tell me that this planet's not fragging amazing, even in comparison to Cybertron."

And he was like, "But Cybertron's my  _home."_

To which I replied, "This is  _my_  home. All this out there. These are  _my_  mountains. They are part of my being and in my breath and bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, Megs. I love them intensely."

Megatron, as we all know, can get a little intense about things - especially things he views as  _his_. But because of that, he can understand when someone else gets intense about  _their_  place, too. I was... I was so  _happy_  to show him the home I love, the home I haven't been back to see in more than 20 years, though I've flown so tantalizingly close to it. He understands that kind of loyalty. He gets that kind of homeland love. And even Megatron had to admit 'my' mountains had a kind of rugged organic beauty.

And all the way home, the whole hour we were flying over a land that is part of my DNA, he stared out through the tiny window with me, and we whispered fiercely back and forth to one another. Well, honestly, he mostly listened. He can be a good pal like that.


	11. February Fool: Megs's Big Prank

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, you guys...!!

**February Fool**

So, yes, I curl up alongside Imaginary Megatron in order to fall asleep every night. It's tradition by this time - a "You're still gonna be here, and we're still all good?" daily checkpoint. (Plus, let's face it, it's just nice.)

Well, he pulled a doozy of a prank on me last night.

I was snuggling into the blankets, all content and smiling that end-of-day, drop-responsibilities, snuggle-up-to-Imaginary-Megatron unconscious smile. When suddenly I realized that the person in the bed with me was NOT Megatron.

It was blinking OVERLORD.  _Smirking._

I yelped and jerked back. Yelped and jerked back _in real life._

Megatron just about fell on his aft laughing. (He'd been watching from the corner, of course.) I almost never see gruff ol' Megs chortling helplessly like that.

I told him off, but I had to laugh pretty quick too. It  _had_  been a great prank, after all. You know you're officially crazy when you laugh out loud and tell off an imaginary character. But yes, he got me good. Between the looming advent of MTMTE #14, and the fact that my pretty blonde choir director/dental hygienist friend has inexplicably become the human avatar for Overlord in [husband] Ironhide's and my heads (trust me on this: she's  _perfect!_ ), the Big Blue Bad has pretty much taken over my mind. Megs simply took advantage of a wonderful one-time opportunity.

You should have seen Ironhide's response when I told him  _this_  one...

Freud really missed out on a choice patient in me.


	12. Imaginary Friend... With A Fusion Cannon!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By now it's been several years. We've moved, grown up, become more interesting people. But there's no safe place to hide from life's sudden scary setbacks...

I think it was the night I got the call saying we were kicked out of our house and had three days to vacate. It was all a big misunderstanding; and when I called back in the morning trying not to cry, the landlord basically said it had just been a scare-tactic. We sorted everything out and were fine.

But that night, I did not know we'd be fine. I only knew we'd been kicked out of the house that I loved, and hoped to live in for the rest of forever. I'd had to hide my crying from the children – you don't tell kids you've just gotten a three-day eviction notice till you're sure; and my husband – never the diplomat – had switched to "Welp, we're moving then. Good riddance!" mode, and did not care to comfort me in tears he could not fix. I felt abandoned, uprooted, and powerless.

That night, I did not know how I would ever fall asleep. I dreaded facing what would happen in the morning.

Then Megs came, as he has before in times of crisis. I know how this sounds, but when Megs shows up like this I receive him as a gift from God, who knows me well enough to send me an imaginary robot-friend to help me weather storms.

Megatron perched on the end of the bed down by my feet, and looked at me seriously. "Want me to help you carry it?" he offered.

I knew he could. I knew what he was offering. But suddenly I-Prime was nervous – nervous as I'd been the first time we'd spark-bonded. He had seen me fully then, as I'd seen him. We'd melded our two histories, two lives, two souls. We knew each other now, down to the heart and center. But I knew what spark-bonding entailed now. (This would be no blind leap of desperate hope the way the last had been.) So I was afraid. I was embarrassed to be shown a coward like this; but I was stuck. I gave my bond-brother a self-deprecating grimace, and ducked my head to hide my face.

He frowned, seeing what was going on despite my muteness. "So you're scared now? Everything's fine when it's you trying to 'save' me-" (Here he snorted.) "-or in your weird imagination if you're horny. But if the tables turn and it's me offering to save you, now you're suddenly so bashful?

I was. And I was just as surprised by this change as he. Probably more so.

I can't recall now whether my reluctance came from not wanting my weaknesses revealed to Megatron, or more from fear of all the darkness I would still face inside him – all those millions of bad years when he had fallen into evil. But I think it was the latter. I was already dealing with a present-day catastrophe; I wasn't sure I was up to reliving all of his as well as mine. I guessed that even after all these years of loving him like he was everything, I was still scared of Megatron. Afraid of being one with him again, and going through it all again. For a bot/person who thrives on being known and held and loved, that was surprising.

Megatron huffed a long exhale and settled forward, elbows propped on his knees, and contemplated me as I lay there in darkly-amused misery. I knew this whole thing was ridiculous. He'd come to help me – come to offer me the thing I always seemed to want inside my mind – and now I was afraid to let him. The whole landlord issue receded a bit as I had to laugh at my own inconsistency.

"Behold the mighty Prime," he teased, but gently.

I just shrugged. "I'm sorry," I told him.

And we really didn't need more words than that. We know each other through and through. We're there for one another, quirks and all.

So Megatron did not open his spark to receive mine. I kept my chestplates closed. I didn't even ask him to lie with me and curl in tight against my back, the way he's done so often for me that I've lost count. No, we did not fall asleep with my head resting on his arm, his free hand draped possessively over my chest. I slept alone in the big bed. And gradually I shrank down to my human self.

But Megatron sat sentinel there at the foot all night, thinking dark thoughts about his fusion cannon and landlords who cause misery (this wasn't the first time he'd been called on in such a crisis). He guarded me like the Lord High Protector he's become in another universe. I relaxed. Whatever came with sunrise, I'd have a big imaginary mech to back me up.

And it was good enough.

Thanks, Bro, for being willing, and for understanding when I was too scared to let you in.


	13. TRUKKIN' the Salt Flats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scientists tell us that our brains can't tell the difference between a memory that's been altered or imagined, and one that's completely accurate. Sometimes, like in court cases, this is a massive problem. Other times, though... other times, it's an AWESOME trick!

The lady at the seminar was trying to help us see our highest, best selves.

I was there only because my husband had changed his life because of this thing and he wanted me to have it, too. I figured I owed him for all the years he's listened to me talk about transformers, all the jokes he's shared with Imaginary Megatron or Starscream, the times he's told people so proudly that I've written books about these bots. This seminar was the type of thing I would normally avoid like it was poison. But I was there, I was willing to participate and try to get all I could out of it. (If I was going to take three days off of work and leave the kids on their own till the evening, I had better try and make sure it was worth it!)

I thought a lot about what I would wear each of the three days of the seminar. Most of the time, I wear clothes as utilities, thinking only of what I need to do that day and what would best serve that purpose. I'll go so far as choosing a color to fit (or fix) my mood, but that's usually it. Sometimes though, my clothes and my accessories are tokens. They are roots and reminders of the Me I want to be that day. The toughest times – the most demanding situations – they are armor. This seminar was an armor/token/utility/tool situation. I needed all my resources. So I wore red. I wore jackets. I wore my Matrix of Leadership shirt, my 'Transformation' necklace a friend got me to represent Prime&Elita&Megatron in my universe. If I had been a knight, I would have come into that seminar mounted on a big draft horse, with heavy sword and tower-shield, in full plate-armor, with my lady's token tucked into my wrist.

My main worry was brainwashing. Not that I thought these people were going to full-on hypnotize me into doing something that I didn't want to do (that was a different seminar he went to!), but it did have a worryingly cult-like feel. So while I was willing to try things for the sake of my husband, I was also determined that no one and nothing would persuade me to do anything I didn't choose with both eyes open.

So in this particular class, the lady in charge of the segment (graceful, gray-haired, tall and slender like an aspen all in white) was leading us in a 'guided visualization.' She was, you will recall, trying to help us find and see our "highest selves." She started by telling us to imagine we were barefoot on a trail out in a forest, had us listen to the birds, told us to walk.

Well, I already know who my best self is. It is Prime. Prime is the shorthand/anchor I use to access Me as a courageous, loving, honorable, strong, and faithful person. So I took off on vacation. And I felt myself begin to smile. This is the story of where I went on my own personalized visualization, and with whom.

* * *

The lady was trying to get us all to feel completely safe and peaceful in imaginary nature. "Where would I-Prime feel completely safe in nature?" I wondered. Most Earth-places I'm too big; I break stuff just by walking. I have to move carefully every moment I am here. I feel like I bring 'unsafeness' with me!

But the Salt Flats, now… (seriously, Google them. I'll wait.) That's the place where people bring their fastest land-speeders to test out on miles and miles of flat white salt. I could do anything I wanted there, and leave no mess. That sounded perfect. And the funny thing was, it was absolutely opposite of where the lady wanted us to go – as a human, I find the Salt Flats to be terrifying. I get terrified of not having enough water, of car-breakdowns; I am always sure I'll end up dead and pickled. The vast white wasteland overwhelms me. But to Prime, it's an alien playground he can't squish.

"Megs!" I called. "Want to go trukkin' in the Salt Flats?"

He was game.

When Dark of the Moon came out, I teased my bond-brother mercilessly for adopting an also-truck like I had. I mean, when has Megatron EVER wanted to be like me? (Answer: a lot; but he would die before admitting it.) But we both know (and of course he will remind me on every occasion) that his truck is much more hardcore-MadMax-awesome than mine ever is. So we're even, I guess. Anyway, we both pulled on our movieverse truck-modes (NOT the new bulbous Prime one; I hate that one; it has three smokestacks and is thus reminiscent of that compensating upstart, Roddy!) and we dieseled off in engine-growling glee.

We stayed far way from the Bonneville Racetrack: our tires would have left ruts for decades on the carefully smoothed surface. We went instead out to the miles and miles of "useless" emptiness, where no one would see us cavorting. And then oh reader, verily we did cavort! The good thing about being a TRUK is that, sure, you might be heavy and sink into the deeper, softer salt; but you have really, really low gears to dig out of it. And the good thing about being a transformer is, if you get reeeally stuck, you just transform, walk out, and shake it off! (Though if I'd blasted Taylor Swift through my speakers, I think Megatron would have tackled me to the ground. Which means I probably did it just to annoy him!)

We drove around with abandon – watching our tracks loop into figure-eights, spirals, and zig-zags. Oh, it was fun! We felt the hot white sunshine on our metal backs. We watched it glint off each other's windshields. We felt the salt beneath us crunch and crumble and sink down in sudden, unexpected softness of soupy water underneath. We got filthy, and didn't care. I mean, we've survived a gazillion years of all-out war; a little salt ain't gonna hurt us.

After trundle-driving for miles in aimless meanders, whooping and hollering and "Watch this!"-ing to each other till our voice-boxes were sore, we both transformed and flopped onto our backs, and let the vastness and the stillness take us.

I looked up into the blue-white sky, at the sun shining there like always. I listened to the ticking of my cooling engine, felt my metal plating soaking up the rays, felt strong and whole and utterly at peace. Not much lives there in the nothingness of white. Maybe a seagull or a buzzard flew disinterestedly overhead, but that was it. I listened to the silence and the soft brush of the wind. Without thinking, both Megatron and I reached out to hold each other's hand. And we just lay there, being still and safe on an alien planet. It was blissful.

Finally, feeling salt-stiff, we lumbered to our feet and stumbled off to fall headlong into the Great Salt Lake. Its brackish waters only changed dry salt for wet – with added tiny mussels and brine-shrimp for extra crunch – but we played there like children, whooping and splashing and making a mess. We'd have to shower for about a month, but it was worth it. Besides, we've got practice helping one another reach the tricky bits, heh heh.

* * *

 

At the end of the exercise, the lady asked if anyone wanted to share what they had seen. What they had learned about their highest, truest selves. I smiled, and kept silent. If my highest and best self is a muck-covered robot-truck, so what? It's a HAPPY, healthy, brave, and honest muck-covered robot who just had the time of his life.

I treasure this memory like it's real. When I recall it, it's with all the vividness of something I experienced in real life. Friends and family (bless them!) have heard me smilingly remember. Yay!


End file.
